Tag Archives: security

Kazakh court starts Tuleshov’s trial

SEPT. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The military court in Astana started the trial of Kazakh businessmanTokhtar Tuleshov, arrested in January on charges of plotting to overthrow the government. Tuleshov, who owns a beer factory in the southern city of Shymkent, was said to be behind the protests against the land reform in Kazakhstan, which mushroomed in several Kazakh cities in the spring.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)

Kyrgyz court jails opposition leader

AUG. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Kyrgyz court sentenced opposition figure and IS sympathiser Nurlan Mutoyev to seven years in jail after he was found guilty of terrorism and inciting ethnic hatred. In May, Mutoyev was arrested after a rally in Bishkek. He stands for the establishment of the strict Islamic Shari’a law in Kyrgyzstan. His arrest was triggered by his open support for the IS group during the rally.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Suicide bomber hits Chinese embassy in Bishkek

BISHKEK, AUG. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — An unidentified suicide bomber drove a car through the Chinese embassy gates in southern Bishkek, blowing up the front of the diplomatic compound and injuring three Kyrgyz workers, in what analysts have described as the first terror attack on a Chinese diplomatic post in Central Asia.

China’s foreign ministry urged an investigation and suspended visa services for Kyrgyz nationals seeking to enter China. In a statement Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, urged the Kyrgyz government to quickly track down the perpetrators of the attack.

“(I) asked the Kyrgyz side to find out the truth as soon as possible, punish those responsible and avoid a reoccurrence of such attacks,” he said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Some analysts said that Kyrgyzstan’s small community of Uyghurs, which call for independence for China’s western Xinjiang region may have been behind the attack.

Others said that the radical IS group, which has strengthened its recruiting network in the region, were behind the attack.

China has followed the US over the past few years and has increasingly pulled its embassies out of busy city centres towards suburban sites which can fit a larger premises and can be more easily protected.

In 2010, the Chinese embassy in Bishkek was expanded and moved to one of these new style compounds built on the edge of the city.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

US on hunt for ex-Tajik police boss

AUG. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The US State Department placed a reward of up to $3m for information on the location of Gulmurod Khalimov, the former head of Tajikistan’s special police force and a US-trained sniper defected to the IS extremist group last year. Shortly after arriving in Syria, Mr Khalimov was injured in an airstrike but has seemingly recovered and been promoted within IS to a senior command position.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Central Asian FMs meet in the US

AUG. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to boost the US’ regional profile, US Secretary of State John Kerry hosted a summit with all five foreign secretaries from Central Asia. Dubbed C5 +1, the meeting was a follow-up from its inaugural session in Samarkand last year. It’s important because the US has been accused of losing interest in the region since pulling its military out of Afghanistan in 2014.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

Armenia’s president sacks security chiefs

AUG. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan sacked Hrant Yepiskoposyan, first deputy director of the National Security Service, after partly blaming him for a two week stand-off with gunmen linked to an imprisoned opposition leader who had captured a police station in Yerevan.

The standoff ended after the gunmen gave themselves up but not before it had triggered street battles between supporters of Zhirayr Sefilyan, the imprisoned leader of the radical opposition group Founding Parliament and a hero veteran of the war in the 1990s with Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Dozens of people were arrested during the clashes, the worst in Yerevan for more than eight years.

Three policemen were also killed during the standoff which ended on July 31. Police have said that they were shot dead by the gunmen who captured the police station.

The authorities refused to release Mr Sefilyan, a key demand of the gunmen, but the standoff did trigger a serious constitutional crisis for Mr Sargsyan and has damaged his standing.

Analysts said that the capture of the police station and the support that the hostage-takers appeared to garner from ordinary people showed the level of frustration at Mr Sargsyan and his supporters.

“Many of them were almost certainly taking an opportunity to protest against the status quo, rather than endorsing an act of violence,” analyst Thomas de Waal wrote on the Open Democracy website.

“But even that is an indication of how desperate many mainstream Armenians feel in the face of a political system which they feel has no place for them — and which, due to recent constitutional changes, is likely to see Sargsyan and his team retain their grip on power for many years.”

Since the stand-off ended, Mr Sargsyan has sacked senior security officials. Kevork Kostanyan also resigned as the country’s prosecutor-general.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

People in Kyrgyz city burn posters

JULY 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — People in Batken, south-western Kyrgyzstan, burned a government poster aimed at countering the growth of radical Islam which showed Kyrgyz women in traditional clothes transitioning into women wearing a full, black burqa. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev unveiled the poster this month as part of the fight against a recruitment drive in Central Asia by the radical IS group. The poster has proved controversial in Kyrgyzstan because of accusations that it is stigmatising conservative Muslims.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Two Kazakhs arrested for spreading rumours

ALMATY, JULY 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh police arrested two people for spreading false information of a major terrorist attack in Almaty via Whatsapp after a lone gunman killed five people earlier this month.

The authorities have said they will take a tough attitude against people who spread rumours. Many Kazakhs are signed up to a series of Whatsapp news groups through which they share information.

On July 18, after a gunman killed eight people in Almaty, security forces ordered people to stay inside. A series of Whatsapp messages about the deteriorating scenario filled the news vacuum.

Ruslan, a 23-year-old Almaty resident, explained.

“I received many pictures and voice messages on my chat groups on Whatsapp,” he told The Conway Bulletin. “But in the end most of that information from voice messages turned out to be fake.”

An interior ministry spokesperson said a 20-year old woman was arrested for spreading false information about hostages being taken at a shopping mall and another man was arrested for spreading rumours that hundreds of armed men were marching through an Almaty suburb.

In February 2014, rumours spread about the bankruptcy of three of Kazakhstan’s biggest banks, triggering a run on the banks and a shortage of cash. In response, a new law came into force making the spread of false information punishable by 10 years inprison.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

20 gunmen in Armenian capital surrender

JULY 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Twenty gunmen who had captured a police station in Yerevan surrendered, ending a standoff that had lasted two weeks and triggered clashes between anti-government protesters and police.

The surrender ends what had become seen as a major test of the current government’s resolve.

Armenia’s National Security Service said in a statement: “The anti- terrorist operation is over. Twenty terrorists have been taken prisoner.”

It is still not clear why the gunmen, who had been calling for the release of the radical opposition leader Zhirayr Sefilyan from prison, had surrendered. Over the weekend they had appeared determined to continue their stand-off despite a deadline passing, briefly taking a doctor prisoner and being accused of shooting dead a policeman. The gunmen have denied that they killed the policeman.

A policeman also died during the initial assault on the police station two weeks ago.

Television footage of the gunmen surrendering showed burley Armenian security forces wearing balaclavas frisking the tired looking gunmen. The gunmen looked thin and drawn. Many were old men.

Shortly before surrendering Varuzhan Avetisyan, the group’s leader, said that the gunmen had fulfilled their mission of inciting popular protests against the government.

“Popular protest will continue. We feel that our victory is close and call on Armenian people to continue the fight,” he was quoted by local media as saying.

Clashes had erupted throughout the week between Armenian police and demonstrators supporting the armed group outside the police station.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Briefing: Gulenist links in Central Asia & S.Caucasus

AUG 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — >>So, we know that the Gulen movement was big in Turkey but in Central Asia? Really? How deep is it and what does it do?

>> The movement, created by cleric Fethullah Gulen, is a social and religious group that has said it wants to integrate moderate Islam into the secular Turkish state and to replicate the model in other Muslim countries. The movement counts millions of followers. As it puts great emphasis on education and upward social mobility, the movement established a network of schools around the world, including in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

>>OK, but who is Gulen? Wasn’t he an ally of Erdogan?

>> Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan found in Gulen a strong ally when he came to power in 2003, a bulwark against a possible military backlash, something that had dogged Turkish leaders for half a century. Gulen and Erdogan, though, fell out in 2013, when a corruption scandal targeting members of Mr Erdogan’s ruling AKP party emerged. Mr Erdogan and others in his party alleged that the Gulenist members of the judiciary had orchestrated the scandal. Since then the government has cracked down on Gulenists in Turkey. Mr Gulen has lived in the United States since 1999 in a self-imposed exile. Now, after a failed coup in Turkey last month blamed on Gulen, Turkey has said it could ask the US government for the extradition of Gulen. Since the coup, Turkish police have detained over 60,000 state employees and dozens of journalists and businessmen allegedly linked to the Gulen movement.

>>Quiete a full-on assault. Will Turkey now force a crackdown on Gulen- linked institutions in Central Asia and South Caucasus?

>> In short, this bureau and the analysts we contacted all agree that Turkey will not go as far as to sever relations with countries that don’t respond to the request to shut down Gulen-linked schools. Apart from Azerbaijan, all other countries are loosely linked with Turkey. Plus, as shown in our story on page 3, these schools are a relative island of quality and reliability in the South Caucasus and Central Asia’s messy educational system. Both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have shrugged off Turkey’s requests to shut down Gulen- linked schools. Georgia appears also to have pretty much ignored Turkey’s request. Only Azerbaijan, Turkey’s super-tight ally, has gone along with Turkey’s request and closed down a TV station that had planned to run an interview with Gulen and brought under government control a university linked to the Gulen movement.

>>OK, but what about the businesses linked to Gulen?

>> The closest business link between Gulenists and the South Caucasus seems to have been uprooted immediately, with the sacking of Sadettin Korkut, chief of Petkim, a petrochemical complex in Izmir, owned by Azerbaijan’s state-owned SOCAR (See the front page of the Business News). It appears that SOCAR was also keeping a list of Gulen-linked people among its ranks. Together with Korkut, who was later arrested, around 200 other employees of SOCAR-linked companies were sacked. This, however, appears to be a one-off act of loyalty from Azerbaijan’s government to Ankara.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)